Archive for August, 2010

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Virtual computer advances enterprise and desktop virtualization with nxtop 3.0 at vmworld

August 31st, 2010
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Virtual Computer, the leader in distributed desktop virtualization, today announced NxTop® 3.0; a suite of products for large enterprises, businesses, and consumers.

Distributed management features, stand-alone bare-metal (Type 1) hypervisor with quick-booting virtual appliance for server- and cloud-based computing, and broad PC hardware coverage, extend NxTop support to any size organization and type of user

Large enterprises are leading the desktop virtualization charge, but are often presented with a mix of point products that do not fully address the needs of all their users,” said Dan McCall, CEO and president of Virtual Computer.

“With NxTop 3.0, our most significant product release to date, we have brought together a collection of capabilities that extends desktop virtualization to every segment of the market, making devices more manageable, reliable and secure while also enhancing the user’s computing experience.”

NxTop 3.0 suite includes:

* NxTop Enterprise: Desktop virtualization and management solution for large organizations; includes NxTop Business with added distributed remote-office management and help-desk support.

* NxTop Business: Desktop virtualization and management solution suitable for organizations from 5 to 500 users operating in a LAN environment.

* NxTop Express: Free desktop virtualization and management solution for five users.

* NxTop Workstation: Free stand-alone Type 1 hypervisor with local virtual machine installer and a quick-booting virtual appliance for access to server- and cloud-based applications.

NxTop Express and NxTop Workstation can be downloaded from the Virtual Computer website. NxTop Enterprise and NxTop Business will be generally available September 2010.

New Distributed Management Features

NxTop was the first product to combine centralized virtual desktop management with distributed execution on a bare-metal client hypervisor.

By distributing the deployment model to take advantage of remote servers, NxTop customers can reduce their operational costs in half without sacrificing mobility or user computing experience, even in bandwidth-constrained environments. NxTop 3.0 broadens these capabilities with new management features that include:

* Hierarchical Management enables deployment of NxTop Center servers at remote offices that use intelligent caching for more efficient bandwidth utilization.

* Remote Help Desk Capability allows IT administrators remote control of end-user PCs, providing assistance across all areas of the platform.

* Policy-based Bandwidth Throttling between NxTop Center and client hypervisor ensures business critical network traffic can be prioritized over system updates and backups.

New Client Features

With NxTop 3.0, IT organizations can create a single managed infrastructure of PCs that will support any combination of local desktops, remote VDI sessions, and server- and cloud-based applications. Enhancements include:

* NxTop Connect: Quick-booting (in seconds) embedded virtual appliance that provides seamless access to server- and cloud-based
applications and server-hosted desktops from all major VDI vendors. Pre-loaded applications include Google Chrome, Skype, and RDP client. NxTop Connect can run standalone on the desktop as thin client or alongside locally executing virtual machines.

* Local Creation of Virtual Machines: IT departments can enable end-users to create their own personal virtual machines that run alongside corporate virtual machines with full isolation (e.g. viruses cannot spread across virtual machines).

Broad PC Hardware Compatibility

NxTop 3.0 supports the broadest set of new and old PCs and peripheral devices in the industry, specifically:

Intel: Any multi-core CPU with VT-x

AMD: Any multi-core CPU with AMD-V

Enhanced Graphics: Recent graphics chipsets from Intel, NVIDIA, and ATI

3G/4G Modems: Integrated and USB-based 3G/4G broadband modems

USB: All categories of USB devices including web-cams and other multi-function devices along with policy based filtering/enabling

Serial Ports: Access to older printer devices used in banking and health-care environments

64-bit Guest OS: 32-bit and 64-bit Windows configurations

Source:http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100831005679/en

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VMware disses bare-metal desktop hypervisors

August 31st, 2010
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VMware is claiming it doesn’t need to deliver on its promise of a bare-metal desktop hypervisor, but says that if it does choose to release a so-called Type 1 client hypervisor it would be better than Citrix’s.

“Let’s set the record straight there,” says Vittorio Viarengo, vice president of desktop marketing for VMware. “If there’s one company that can nail a client hypervisor, it’s VMware.”

VMware certainly believed that statement when it said it would deliver a bare-metal desktop hypervisor by the end of 2009. But more recently VMware executives have said building such a technology “is not an easy computer science problem to solve,” and that it is no longer making any promises on when VMware’s bare-metal development would turn into a marketable product.

At VMworld in San Francisco this week, VMware will release version 4.5 of VMware View, its desktop virtualization platform, but it won’t include a bare-metal option.

Citrix has beaten VMware to the punch here with its own XenClient, while start-ups Virtual Computer and Neocleus have been shipping products for some time.

Another company, MokaFive, says it will have a bare-metal hypervisor on the market early in 2011.

But VMware now says customers aren’t ready for a bare-metal hypervisor. VMware’s project is in its advanced development labs and could be ready fairly quickly once the company decides to turn it into a product, Viarengo says. But it’s not VMware’s top priority.

“Just from a priority perspective, it took a back seat for now,” Viarengo says.

Bare-metal desktop hypervisors install directly onto a computer’s hardware, rather than on top of a host operating system as Type 2 hypervisors do.

Analysts and some vendors believe this will provide greater isolation between virtual machines, therefore improving security and making it more feasible for IT to install corporate operating systems and applications onto employee-owned machines.

But bare-metal is still in the early stages of development, and not just at VMware.

Today’s bare-metal client hypervisors are “not robust at all,” and more of a “niche technology,” IDC system and virtualization analyst Ian Song said in a recent interview.

While installing a Type 2 hypervisor on top of an operating system is relatively easy, the hardware on today’s PCs would in many cases not be compatible with a Type 1 hypervisor, says Scott Davis, CTO of VMware’s desktop business unit.

The goal of letting users access corporate applications on personal machines is best met by Type 2 technology, at least for now, he says.
Today’s Type 2 hypervisors do a better job ensuring that corporate OS images can run on the same machine as personal desktop images without causing security risks, he says.

“We decided from a priority perspective that there are ways to solve a wider range of use cases with a Type 2 approach,” Viarengo says.
But just as Type 1, bare-metal hypervisors replaced Type 2 technology on servers in the data center, bare-metal virtualization is likely to play a role in the future of desktop technology. VMware is unlikely to scrap its bare-metal plans entirely, but is at risk of falling behind the competition by waiting.

Citrix’s XenClient could start shipping on PCs sold by hardware vendors as early as the first quarter of next year, Burton Group analyst Chris Wolf has said, adding that “If VMware doesn’t even have a product in beta by that point, you would have to say VMware is at least a year behind.”

VMware’s public statements indicate the company believes it’s not risking much by not having a bare-metal hypervisor ahead of rival Citrix.

Remarks by Viarengo and Davis are similar to ones made by VMware CEO Paul Maritz in July when the company reported its financial results.

“We are providing client-side — big client-side — functionality with our offline View capability, which comes as part of [VMware View] 4.5,” Maritz said, as quoted by The Register.

“The feedback that we got from our customers is the market is not ready yet for a bare-metal, naked hypervisor.

So instead we are supplying essentially a Windows-within-Windows hypervisor, which gives us much better coverage over the installed base in particular.

The challenge with the bare-metal hypervisor is: ‘how do you address the installed base?’ So we made that change based on customer feedback.”

Source:http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/083110-vmware-desktop-hypervisors.html

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Dual-core Atom netbooks will limp onto the market

August 31st, 2010
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IT APPEARS THAT vendors are starting to worry about getting saddled with too many netbooks.

Rumours out of Taiwan say that netbooks using the latest dual-core Atom N550 processor are not expected to hit the markets until later this Autumn.

The reason is that vendors are less than happy about pushing netbooks while tablets are starting to come into their own.

Tablets were widely predicted to be netbook killers and in times when the economy is touch and go, vendors do not want to build up inventories of too many netbooks.

Acer’s dual-core netbook, the 10.1-inch Aspire One D255 is already set for launch in the US in early September with the release in Taiwan scheduled for the end of the month at a price below $437.43.

While Acer was the first to set a launch date for the dual-core netbooks, Asustek has not even decided on its launch schedules. Digitimes thinks that some netbook makers will wait until October or November to launch their models.

It is not as if the bigger players have not got the machines built. Asustek has already revealed its dual-core netbook, the Eee PC 1015PEM. Lenovo and Gigabyte have also both showcased dual-core netbook models.

Intel is not too surprised, though. It apparently didn’t expect Atom N550 based netbooks from OEMs to really start hitting the market until October and November anyway.

Source:http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1730204/dual-core-atom-netbooks-limp-market

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Microsoft co-founder sues everyone but Microsoft and Amazon

August 31st, 2010
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MICROSOFT CO-FOUNDER Paul Allen has decided to wage a legal battle against just about everyone by claiming patent infringement against a number of the Internet’s biggest names.

The saga revolves around a company that Allen founded in 1992, Interval Research. Now little more than a patent holding outfit, Interval has alleged that AOL, Apple, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, Officemax, Staples, Yahoo and Youtube are all using up to four of its patented inventions without licences.

Allen invested tens of millions into the outfit some years ago and it employed some notable researchers to come up with ideas that one day might be profitable. Interval filed many seemingly wide ranging patents which it now says are “key processes in e-commerce”.

Allen has left Microsoft out of the complaint that claims patent infringements which, according to Allen’s spokesman, relate to “key pieces of the Internet”. Most of the defendants named are e-commerce firms, but perhaps the largest e-commerce company, Amazon, is not among them. However, like Microsoft, Amazon is headquartered in Paul Allen’s home town of Seattle, Washington.

It’s not surprising that many of the companies named in the lawsuit have already said that they will defend themselves against Interval’s lawsuit. Equally unsurprising is the fact that many are claiming that Interval, a firm that for all intents and purposes ceased to exist a decade ago, is simply being a patent troll.

According to PatentlyO, the patents are well drafted though that may not be enough for Allen to succeed. The patents have been described as extremely broad and quite vague.

Legal arguments are also likely to focus on whether the inventions were blindingly obvious when the patents were filed. Apparently there are also some questions about how, exactly, the defendants are infringing the patents.

Then there’s the question, why did Interval wait until now to file suit? For many years now it has had ample time to sue these companies while the economy was in far better shape than it is today.

Over its active lifetime, Interval managed to amass about 300 patents. The firm was even referenced in Sergey Brin and Larry Page’s research thesis in which the pair presented the ideas that turned into Google. At this point it is not known whether this will hurt Google’s chances to wriggle out of Allen’s lawsuit.

In reality, Interval might be angling for some sort of settlement from one of the firms it has accused of patent infringement. Should any single firm cave in, Interval’s allegations will gain credence and help it gain traction against the others. Its actions could galvanise some of the Internet’s biggest rivals to circle the wagons in order to safeguard their own revenues.

One also must wonder if Microsoft’s exclusion is a sign of how little the firm has achieved on the Internet or whether Allen is just protecting his investment by managing not to, in effect, sue himself. But then, too, that might bring up antitrust questions.

It’s not at all clear what is going on here, but whatever it is, it looks like it’s going to drag through the courts for a long time.

Source:http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1730211/microsoft-founder-sues-microsoft-amazon

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Toshiba starts flash 24nm production

August 31st, 2010
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IT LOOKS LIKE Toshiba has beaten its rivals by being the first to start mass production of NAND flash using a 24nm process.

The current process is being used to make 2bit-per-cell 64Gbit chips.

Products are starting to appear in the shops but no one seemed to mention the 24nm process.

Toshiba now says that it will add 32Gb and 3bit-per-cell products made on the 24nm process.

NAND flash memories made using the 24nm process are built using Toggle DDR, which enhances data transfer speed.

Toshiba has been going flat out to migrate to the new process in a bid to get its version of the products out there first.

It is currently the market leader in the NAND flash memory market.

Samsung has said it has 27nm technology, IMFlash, and is ready for 26nm technology, and Hynix has announced 26nm technology, but neither of them have gotten anything into mass production yet.

Source:http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1730303/toshiba-starts-flash-24nm-production

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Gigabyte x58a-ud9 review

August 31st, 2010
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Gigabyte recently released one hot dish of a X58 motherboard.

It is the performance oriented GA-X58A-UD9 motherboard, based on the X58 chipset and boasting features like a 24 phase (!) unlocked power design, 4-way graphics support including NVIDIA SLI and ATI CrossFireX, as well as a host of distinctive other features.

See, to date one of the most reputable processor series has to be the Core i7 based on socket LGA 1366.

When that puppy was released merely two years ago (November 3, 2008) nobody knew that the first ever wave of Nehalem processors would be that strong and powerful.

When Lynnfield (Core i7 on the 1156 socket) was released we certainly all loved the new processors, but leading by a significant amount in overall performance was still the high-end Core i7 965 and 975 processors.

Intel however added a new processor to the line-up, the ever so strong Core i7 980 Extreme six-core processor.

Seriously breathtaking, and to date the fastest consumer processor on the globe with very decent overclocking potential as well.

That was reason enough for most ODMs to make new updates and revisions of X58 chipset based motherboards, as next to the new processor we have also seen the gradual adoption of features like USB 3.0 and SATA3 6G.

That sparked ODM’s to bring these new innovations to your doorstep by inventing solutions themselves.

More costly yes, but by embedding a NEC USB 3.0 controller and Marvell SATA3 6G SATA/AHCI/RAID controller onto that motherboard you can actually bring some interesting features to the table and literally rehash the X58 motherboard line-up.

So the ODMs went back to the drawing board, added custom controllers to the motherboards and re-released their X58 series motherboards.

However, a few of them decided to completely overhaul the design and fit them with the latest features and most high-end components and decided to design a severe über-cool motherboard targeted at the high-end, enthusiast and pro consumers.

Gigabyte is one of the ODMs releasing something really special, and today we’ll review that GA-X58A-UD9 motherboard.

It is chucked full with the latest gadgets and features; comes with liquid cooling blocks on the chipset and it is equipped to make sure you get the very best overclock out of your system.

Check her out, she’s a thing of beauty… check her out, it’s Gigabyte’s most extravagant X58 to date. And then let’s move onwards into the review please..

Source:http://www.guru3d.com/article/gigabyte-x58a-ud9-review/

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DRAM prices are still in free fall

August 31st, 2010
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DRAM CONTRACT PRICES have been falling through-out the second half of August, according to the beancounters at DRAMexchange.

The analysts noted that pricing in the DRAM spot market is also facing a continuing decline as manufacturers just are not keen on buying too much of it.

Late August contract prices for mainstream 1Gb DDR3 chips fell by five percent to between $2.22 and $2.41. This means you can pick up 2GB DDR3 modules for $40 on average.

DRAMexchange said that same-density DDR2 parts have slid by up to two per cent for the same period slashing 2GB DDR3 module prices to $36.

While the fall in DRAM prices is encouraging PC makers to increase memory content per PC, demand is growing at a slower pace than output from the supply side.

In other words the DRAM makers are less keen to supply the lower cost chips.

In the spot market, prices for mainstream 1Gb DDR2 and DDR3 chips have fallen to below $2 for DDR2 and and $2.40 for DDR3.

Branded 1Gb DDR2 is $1.99 and same-density DDR3 will set you back $2.35, respectively, on August 30.

Source:http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1730264/dram-prices-free-fall

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